“Actually, 1707. It was the best for everybody. The alternative would have been civil war, or maybe war with England. What we gained was stability and prosperity. But what we lost was something you can’t define. Edinburgh used to be a capital. It never would be again. So, I think we’ve all gone slowly crazy.”

“Conflicts in the programming,” Henry said. “A city called Hal.”

“Something like that.”

“You Brits amaze me. The way you’re so hung up on stuff that happened so long ago.”

“And you guys have no history. History sticks around.”

He glanced around, at Princes Street Gardens, the park which descended in the shadow of Castle Rock. “Was this a river bed?”

“No. But it was a loch. Artificial. Used to dump their sewage in it—”

“And drown witches.”

“Actually, yes. They drained it, to make the New Town.”

“So, lunch…”

It was still early. After a debate they settled on a Seattle’s Best Coffee outlet, which Henry was surprised to find here, and they drank lattes and ate immense chocolate chip cookies.

It was a relief to get in out of the cold.

“Your work seems to be going better,” she said.

“You mean I’m not complaining so much.”

“How come?”

He couldn’t see any way to escape, so he pulled a package from his jacket pocket, and told her the truth.

It was a courier package from Houston. It contained a tape and a transcript of a conversation with Jays Malone, in which the old guy had evidently done his very best to ransack his memories, and provide Henry with the context he needed.

He tried to explain this to Jane. “Geology is about decrypting a tangled story: how a rock was formed, how it got where it was and what happened to it since is as important as what it’s made of. That’s what we call context. And that’s what Jays has given me here.” He scratched his head. “I’m no fan of Man-in-Space. Not when it cuts into good unmanned science missions.”

“Including your own.”

“Yes. But the astronauts weren’t bad geologists, on the whole, when they tried. Pilots are trained to be observers, after all, and they all had strong, flexible minds. I suspect they competed with each other to turn in good performances as scientists.”

Jane leafed through the little package, complete with a few sketch maps and diagrams in Jays’s spidery old man’s hand. There was a brief note in there, which Jane now found.

She eyed Henry. “So who’s Geena?”

He winced. “My ex-wife.”

She nodded, impassive, and handed him the note. “So what is this? Is she building a bridge?”

Henry glanced at the note again. Geena was about to go into purdah, working as a capcom on the current Station mission, and beginning the long process of training for her next flight…